Former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson broke his silence as the one year anniversary of the shooting death of Michael Brown approaches.

Wilson, who now lives more-or-less in exile in a St. Louis suburb, sat down for a lengthy interview with New Yorker Magazine and discussed issues such as race relations and the fallout in his life from that fateful day, August 9, 2014.

Shortly after the incident happened, Wilson began receiving death threats. Two subsequent investigations (criminal grand jury and Department of Justice) cleared the officer of wrongdoing, finding that he acted in self-defense when the 6’ 5”, 300 pound Brown attacked him.

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Contrary to the early media narrative of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” forensic evidence found that Brown had not been shot in the back, as some claimed the officer had done, but in the front, with multiple witnesses corroborating the claim that Brown was coming towards Wilson. The investigation also supported Wilson’s account that Brown had, early in the altercation, reached in the police cruiser and punched the officer. According to the former police officer’s previous accounts, the 18 year-old was trying to take his gun.

Wilson could not speak specifically about the events of that day because Michael Brown’s family filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against him in the spring.

What he could say is that race did not affect the way he did his police work. “Everyone is so quick to jump on race. It’s not a race issue,” Wilson said.

Wilson, now 29, stated that he liked working in black communities. He found the work interesting and challenging. “I had fun there. There’s people who will just crack you up.”

The former Ferguson officer told The New Yorker that he had not read the Justice Department’s report on racism in Ferguson. “I don’t have any desire,” he said. “I’m not going to keep living in the past about what Ferguson did. It’s out of my control.”

After the grand jury and the DOJ cleared Wilson, he had hoped to stay on with the Ferguson police force; but the department told him his presence would put other officers at risk. Other police departments he applied to have given him similar feedback. “It’s too hot an issue, so it makes me unemployable,” Wilson said.

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Supporters raised a half a million dollars for him, which allowed Wilson to leave Ferguson and buy a home for his family outside of St. Louis. The remaining funds are now being used in his legal defense.

Wilson’s wife, Barb, also a police officer, recalled that neither of them anticipated the fallout from the incident. “You know, a typical police shooting is: you get about a week to a week and a half off, you see a shrink, you go through your Internal Affairs interviews. And then you come back.” Barb said, “I didn’t think it would be a big weight on his shoulders. This is kind of what we signed up for.”

The New Yorker’s Jack Halpern reports:

Later that night (after the shooting)…they turned on the television and watched live coverage of unrest in Ferguson. Barb recalled, “We stayed up all night watching, like, ‘Oh, my God—what’s going on? What are they doing?’ Barb’s younger son, who was then six, asked why there were images on television of Ferguson burning. Wilson told me, “I said, ‘Well, I had to shoot somebody.’ And he goes, ‘Well, why did you shoot him? Was he a bad guy?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he was a bad guy…’”

Halpern asked Wilson if he “thought Brown was truly a ‘bad guy,’ or just a kid who had got himself into a bad situation. ‘I only knew him for those forty-five seconds in which he was trying to kill me, so I don’t know,’ Wilson said.”

Wilson was interviewed by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in November of last year, and he said of Brown’s parents: “I’m sorry that their son lost his life. It wasn’t the intention of that day. It’s what occurred that day, and there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make a parent feel better.” Wilson also reaffirmed, “I did my job that day.”